Let's leave it.

There was a point there that was intended to be near the subject of the thread. If it gets close enough, I might bring it up again.

There is an interesting quote by Quine in David Wiggins's paper Sentence Meaning, Negation, and Plato's Problem of Non-Being:

"It is often felt that there is some conflict between the sense in which sentence-meaning is primary and semantic atomism. The most concise refutation of this which I know is Quine's ("Russell's Ontological Development," in Bertrand RusselI, Philosopher of the Century, ed. R. Shoenman, London, 1967, p. 306): "The unit of communication is the sentence and not the word. This point of semantical theory was long obscured by the undeniable primacy, in one respect, of words. Sentences being limitless in number and words limited, we necessarily understand most sentences by construction from antecedently familiar words. Actually there is no conflict here. We can allow the sentences a monopoly of full 'meaning' in some sense, without denying that the meaning must be worked out. Then we can say that knowing words is knowing how to work out the meanings of sentences containing them. Dictionary definitions of words are mere clauses in a recursive definition of the meanings of sentences."

All these problems have been dealt [with] before by the ancients and then by the Kantians — schopenhauer1

By "dealt with" do you mean "resolved"? Surely not. If you only mean "recognized and discussed," then Kimhi, for one, would be the first to insist on this.

the point being that psychology (aka "psychologism") structures the world such that A is ~A, but we cannot see but the metaphysical reality is thusly obscured. — schopenhauer1

I want to understand this, but can't quite. Could you elaborate? I would have thought that psychology strutures the world so that A is not ~A.

Then we can say that knowing words is knowing how to work out the meanings of sentences containing them. — Pierre-Normand

This is fine, as long as we expand what a "sentence" is to include ostensive gestures and other "non-linguistic sentences." Anyone who's watched a toddler learn words, knows that it starts with an adult pointing to the target and then saying the word. But I'm happy to consider the pointing as a sentence of sorts: "That's a ball!" Indeed, such a sentence is often uttered along with the pointing.

Quine believed in semantic holism, right?

classically speculative knowledge is thought to undergird practical knowledge. On this classical account we never carry out practical activities without also engaging in speculative knowing. For example, if you want to eat an orange you must first be able to recognize it and see that it is edible, nutritious, desirable, etc. If you can't possess that kind of knowledge about it then the question of eating it will never come up. — Leontiskos

Kimhi says that the proposition "The orange is good to eat" has existence conferred upon it by someone affirming or denying that the orange is good to eat.

That seems to leave knowledge in a somewhat precarious position. "The orange is good to eat" needs to be available as a proposition that can be known, but on the hylomorphic reading I have suggested, it is only available in a judgment that the orange is good to eat (or not), as "what is asserted," the content of the judgment. But then you would have to judge that things stand thus-and-so (or don't) even to be capable of knowing that they do or don't. Sounds like a cart and horse situation.

All of the propositional attitudes will face this problem if there are, as Kimhi says explicitly, no forceless truth-bearers.

This problem remains even if we make some obvious improvements to my reading. When Kimhi says "conferred" there is some ambiguity. You could think of a judgment as an event, and "what is thought" as persisting only for the duration of the event.

But we often use such locutions in the past tense -- "what Frege thought," "what Kimhi said." That suggests that "conferring existence" might have some staying power, so thinking, judging, or saying P brings it into existence --- and leaves it there, for others to think and judge and say. I get to say that what Frege said is right or wrong.

If that's so, Kimhi might be offering an interesting philosophical just-so story about where propositions come from, assigning priority to judgment over wondering, wishing believing, hoping, guessing, knowing, doubting, and so on.

Except that he explicitly says that P does not persist as a truth-bearer with no force, and that seems to deny its availability for being governed by the other propositional attitudes that might come along.

But does it? Or does it only say that propositions *only* appear governed by a propositional attitude? If I wonder whether P, there's P as "what I wonder". If I guess that P, there's P as " what I guess."

What propositions never do is just hang out bearing truth or not.

So Kimhi is an anti-realist.

By "dealt with" do you mean "resolved"? Surely not. If you only mean "recognized and discussed," then Kimhi, for one, would be the first to insist on this. — J

The bolded.

the point being that psychology (aka "psychologism") structures the world such that A is ~A, but we cannot see but the metaphysical reality is thusly obscured.
— schopenhauer1

I want to understand this, but can't quite. Could you elaborate? I would have thought that psychology strutures the world so that A is not ~A. — J

Sorry yes, that's what I meant :). Thus.. the rest follows here:
Reality and illusion is at the heart of much of early philosophy. Analytics seem to just want to clarify the phenomenal reality and to do so, want to provide basic rules to communicate what our psychology tells us. The minute you don't ascribe it to psychology, you are making a METAPHYSICAL claim and not an epistemological one. Schopenhauer had four volumes on his metaphysical claims. Platonists/Neoplatonists also had such writings. There is generally a lack of such claims in linguistically-based analytic philosophy. The problem I see here is that the metaphysics has been detached from the claims. Perhaps Kimhi is decrying this.

Edit: Furthermore, Kimhi may also be alluding to various forms of computationalism. That is to say, there might be a sort of fundamental "mentalese" underlying language. Logic is an extension of this perhaps, and thus the assertion stroke makes it seem as if written logic is separate from the "mentalese logic" of the human mind. I don't see the problem with this gripe though. Mentalese would have to be understood through various linguistic analysis, cognitive psychological studies, and such, and would be very hard to actually determine. I would imagine we would have to consult various studies on how we inference, integrate new concepts, calculate, process, and the like. But none of that to me matters to the assertion itself regarding a fact of the world.

Kimhi says that the proposition "The orange is good to eat" has existence conferred upon it by someone affirming or denying that the orange is good to eat.

...

When Kimhi says "conferred" there is some ambiguity.

...

Except that he explicitly says that P does not persist as a truth-bearer with no force, and that seems to deny its availability for being governed by the other propositional attitudes that might come along.

...

So Kimhi is an anti-realist. — Srap Tasmaner

I can't help but wonder if you are reading things into Kimhi with this "proposition skepticism." To take one example, where does Kimhi say that, "the proposition [...] has existence conferred upon it by someone affirming or denying [it]"?

What propositions never do is just hang out bearing truth or not. — Srap Tasmaner

As I read him, Kimhi is saying that if we strip away the assertoric force from a proposition, then it will not be true, false, or even meaningful. His argument is very similar to Wittgenstein's argument that Rombout presents in 4.3.1. In fact it is almost identical except for a mild upgrade.

@Banno

Imagine someone saying something like this about numbers:

"What numbers never do is just hang out quantifying trees."

How would you respond to that?

where does Kimhi say that, "the proposition [...] has existence conferred upon it by someone affirming or denying [it]"? — Leontiskos

Thought I had quoted it somewhere, but no. I'm away from the book, but it's early, coming off the discussion of the veridical sense of 'to be' and into the syllogisms of thinking and being. I take the veridical use of 'to be' to be 'assertoric force'.

Thought I had quoted it somewhere, but no. — Srap Tasmaner

Here are some places where you got close:

The adoption of the force / content distinction allowed them to construe that which is true / false or is / is-not the case (e.g., a thought, a sentence, a state of affairs) as having its own existence independent of that conferred upon it through the veridical use of the verb “to be.” — Kimhi, Thinking and Being, 9

Kimhi says that existence is conferred on propositions by the veridical use of 'to be', so that's judgment or assertion. — Srap Tasmaner

-

I take the veridical use of 'to be' to be 'assertoric force'. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, and this is where it gets tricky. For example:

The second predicative or two-place sense is the veridical or copulative sense. The verb understood in a veridical sense displays a judgment or assertion, namely, an act of a two-way logical capacity or form. The judgments "Helen is beautiful" and "Quasimodo is not beautiful" are positive and negative acts of the syncategorematic (or logical) form "___ is beautiful." — Kimhi, Thinking and Being, 22

Without wading into this too far, the word "displays" is doing a lot of work here. So we can say that this veridical sense of the verb pertains to assertoric force, but at least here Kimhi is not saying anything about assertions ("self-identifying displays") or people making those assertions. (See section 2.5 regarding "displays")

Yeah I did quote that. Thought so.

I'll take a look at displays.

But unless you're reading "use" creatively, he does say what I said he did.

But unless you're reading "use" creatively, he does say what I said he did. — Srap Tasmaner

I don't see it.

<Frege/Geach's adoption of the force / content distinction allowed them to construe a 'proposition' as having its own existence independent of that conferred upon it through the veridical use of the verb “to be," therefore Kimhi holds that a proposition has existence conferred upon it by someone affirming or denying it>.

One can oppose Frege/Geach without adopting the consequence. I think there is more than one reason why, but in general it is key to understand that Kimhi is making a distinction, not taking the surface-level contrary position. Specifically, he is saying that assertoric force is not limited to assertions. It is also present in what we have called declarative sentences. It's not that propositions have no existence (apart from assertions). It's that their existence is bound up with assertoric force, and is not separable from it. ...Unless he goes farther than that and actually takes up "proposition skepticism," but I don't think such a thing is in evidence early in the book.

(Like Wittgenstein, Kimhi seems to take care in what he doesn't say, and one wishes he had been bolder and said more.)

(One can see here why @J came under the impression that a non-assertoric force was in play, with the help of Banno; and why @Banno wanted to push assertoric force and illocutionary force together.)

Huh.

Well, I'm not about to claim his writing is crystal clear on this point.

What do you make of his use of the word "existence" in the first quote?

I suppose "allowed them to construe" is ambiguous. I took it as a rhetorical denial of the claim that truth-bearers have some existence besides what is conferred upon them by judgment. Do you read that differently?

Frege/Geach's adoption of the force / content distinction allowed them to construe a 'proposition' as having its own existence independent of that conferred upon it through the veridical use of the verb “to be," — Leontiskos

- Kimhi refers to TLP 4.063 at least three times in his book, and that is the key to understanding these sorts of claims. Rombout looks at that exact passage in greater context:

His argument is very similar to Wittgenstein's argument that Rombout presents in 4.3.1. In fact it is almost identical except for a mild upgrade. — Leontiskos

-

What do you make of his use of the word "existence" in the first quote?

I suppose "allowed them to construe" is ambiguous. I took it as a rhetorical denial of the claim that truth-bearers have some existence besides what is conferred upon them by judgment. Do you read that differently? — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, I would replace "judgment" with "assertoric force," and this has to do with Kimhi's distinction between an assertion and something which merely displays assertoric force. Once that is in place "conferral" takes on a different sense, for then the verb and not the speaker is what confers on the proposition its existence and nature or meaning. In my own words: the integrity of a proposition is bound up with assertoric force and the veridical use/sense of the verb.

"Existence" feels clumsy in that sentence, but Kimhi may be trying to speak in more general terms in this introductory part of his book. But I don't want to get bogged down in this one sentence. I am interpreting that footnote in relation to later context, and in particular, "Frege's Point."

(Sorry - I edited these posts about a million times)

The problem I see here is that the metaphysics has been detached from the claims. Perhaps Kimhi is decrying this. — schopenhauer1

Do you mean that we (or some philosophers) are making claims about metaphysics without realizing that they are in fact only claims, from someone's point of view -- thoughts, in other words? I can sort of see how this might connect to Kimhi's insistence on uniting what he calls the ontological and psychological explanations of logic. He doesn't think the "detachment" can happen at all.

I see the edits now.

Once that is in place "conferral" takes on a different sense, for then the verb and not the speaker is what confers on the proposition its existence and nature or meaning. — Leontiskos

Then it does turn on what is understood by "use". Is there a real sense in which a word is just there in a sentence -- and thus "used" in it -- without someone "using" it in a sentence? What can a verb do on its own?

"Display" something seems to be the answer -- and I will look into that -- but there's another way to take that too, that this only means it is by this use of this verb that one indicates or expresses or shows forth or even represents their judgment that ...

Does a Fregean formula like "Fa" display the independent existence of a thought or a state of affairs? Or is it a judgment?

Then it does turn on what is understood by "use". Is there a real sense in which a word is just there in a sentence -- and thus "used" in it -- without someone "using" it in a sentence? What can a verb do on its own? — Srap Tasmaner

I was hoping this would help, "In my own words: the integrity of a proposition is bound up with assertoric force and the veridical use/sense of the verb."

My sense is that Kimhi thinks there is a veridical use of the verb and also a non-veridical use of the verb, and here he wants to talk about the veridical use of the verb. That doesn't entirely solve the puzzle, but I'm not sure this single sentence can bear the scrutiny we are applying.

My read is that at this early stage in the book Kimhi is attempting to distance himself from what will eventually become "Frege's Point," but without yet saying anything overly specific.

Does a Fregean formula like "Fa" display the independent existence of a thought or a state of affairs? Or is it a judgment? — Srap Tasmaner

For Frege Fa prefixed by the "horizontal" represents an assertable proposition, a thought. It is not a judgment.

For Kimhi Frege's Fa displays assertoric force and therefore is not independent of it. It is not a judgment, but "displays" one. As I said earlier in the thread, I am not convinced that Frege would disagree with such claims. There is a possible equivocation on "assertoric force."

As to the question of the ontological status of a proposition, I don't find Kimhi taking a stand one way or another, and although I am told that Frege is a Platonist on this issue I haven't read him myself to know the specifics. I don't know that this question of the ontological status of a proposition is central to Kimhi's case, but it may come in later on in the book. And it could be argued to be central in one way or another. I just don't see Kimhi attending to it.

I'm not sure this single sentence can bear the scrutiny we are applying to it. — Leontiskos

Fair. The thing about existence surprised me, so I took it seriously.

I have been doing some dot-connecting and reading between the lines in these recent posts.

I think we do have a tendency to treat every word as a term of art, with a specific technical meaning. Hence I have been treating as equivalent 'assertoric force', 'judgment', and 'assertion'.

Until I'm convinced Kimhi means these consistently differently.

(The man will put in parentheses "a thought, a sentence, a state-of-affairs", so that's not an invitation to split hairs or take these all in distinct technical senses, at least not for his point.)

Specifically, [Kimni] is saying that assertoric force is not limited to assertions. — Leontiskos

One can see here why J came under the impression that a non-assertoric force was in play — Leontiskos

This is starting to get hair-splitty, but yes, I would still say that an "assertoric force not limited to assertions" is either incoherent or, in some sense or manifestation, also non-assertoric. But the nomenclature doesn't matter so much. Better terms could have been chosen, starting with Kimhi himself.

Kimhi says that existence is conferred on propositions by the veridical use of 'to be', so that's judgment or assertion. — Srap

The problem is, that’s not all Kimhi says about what the veridical to-be does. Maybe this is only Kimhi's reading of Kahn, but he says in the footnote on p. 9 that the V2B is what "confers existence" on "that which is true/false or is/is-not the case". The Analytics, he says, want to believe that the force/content distinction allows them to regard propositional content independently of the veridical. But the explanatory parentheses about what's covered by the V2B is alarming: "(e.g., a thought, a sentence, a state of affairs)". So it’s not just that, as you say, existence is conferred on propositions by the V2B. Evidently, the V2B makes no distinction between a psychological event (thought), a statement (sentence), and something non-linguistic in the world (a state of affairs). Even if Kimhi (or Kahn) is using "thought" in the Fregean sense of "proposition," this is still hard to swallow. How do you understand the V2B’s connection with states of affairs, which are generally considered to be the subjects of propositions, not the propositions themselves? Is this still a type of judgment or assertion?

I take the veridical use of 'to be' to be 'assertoric force'. — Srap

If we were strictly talking about propositions, then I think this would be right.

Ha, our comments overlapped. You picked up on the same question in the footnote.

I think what he's going for there with the "whatever is true/false, is/isn't" is every kind of theory out there about truth. Philosophers have tried all kinds of formulations, and placed the emphasis in different ways, but it's all about the same thing. Think of the ambiguity of the word "fact". True proposition? Or state of affairs that "obtains"? --- That last word there, that's typical philosophical shop talk, right? (Like "grasping".) No one knows what it means. No one defines it. But we all know what you're getting at. States of affairs (more shop talk) only show up as the counterpart of true propositions. It's all the same stuff.

Do you mean that we (or some philosophers) are making claims about metaphysics without realizing that they are in fact only claims, from someone's point of view -- thoughts, in other words? I can sort of see how this might connect to Kimhi's insistence on uniting what he calls the ontological and psychological explanations of logic. He doesn't think the "detachment" can happen at all. — J

Yes, that's basically it. If someone like Frege is saying, "The cat on the mat" is not just something that is an epistemological claim then it seems to be a metaphysical one. That is to say, which is it? Making an "assertion", either means someone "knows" something, or is describing "what IS the case" (more than one's psychological understanding of what's going on but what IS ACTUALLY going on). There is a whole set of assumptions that the audience would not be privy to simply by looking at symbolic logic. Frege, for example, if I read this right, was a sort of "Platonist" regarding propositions. So, that's a HUGE worldview that is not connected to the logic itself, and perhaps should be connected to indicate what we mean by the "assertion stroke".

That could well be true, and fits with your earlier point that Kimhi isn't (here) interested in being precise with terms. And ordinarily I'd just say, OK fine -- except that the subject of the book is precisely the difference, if any, and the unity, if any, between the world ("A or ~A") and the mind ("p or ~p"). Ontology or psychology? Events or statements? Being or thinking? etc. I guess all I'm saying is that I wish Kimhi had sacrificed the big-picture view about "whatever is true/false/is/isn't" and given us more details about how assertion and V2B apply in the various instances.

Kimhi says that the proposition "The orange is good to eat" has existence conferred upon it by someone affirming or denying that the orange is good to eat. — Srap Tasmaner

If this is so, then Kimhi is using "proposition" for what others call an "assertion".

And his argument reduces to his inability to distinguish what the sentence is about from what is being done with it. He is claiming that one cannot understand what a statement is about without deciding if it is true or false.

And here he is just wrong.

We can understand what it would take for a statement to be true or false, without assigning a judgement to the statement.

It would be interesting to ask him about how questions are to be understood. How does "Is that orange good to eat?" exist? Not by being affirmed or denied. How will he account for questions without admitting some alternative? How do questions differ from assertions in his account?

Quine believed in semantic holism, right? — frank

I had written a response to you that I then feared might not quite do justice to Quine's thesis of the indeterminacy of translation. I rephrased my response as a question that I submitted to ChatGPT o1-preview, who thought about it for seven seconds before providing an answer that undermined my attempt to cast Quine as a semantic internalist somewhat like Searle. ChatGPT also helpfully reminded me that Quine was more of a behaviorist (which, to be fair to Quine's opponents, still threatens the normativity of thought and language in a different way).

- Yep, good, and this is why I wasn't finding it useful to try to gain perfect precision on Frege's sense of proposition (even in the unlikely event that he has a clear and consistent sense).

I think we do have a tendency to treat every word as a term of art, with a specific technical meaning. Hence I have been treating as equivalent 'assertoric force', 'judgment', and 'assertion'. — Srap Tasmaner

I think this is a fine way to read Kimhi. As I recall he will consistently talk about displays of force/judgment/assertion and self-identifying displays of force/judgment/assertion. I find that way of speaking unhelpful. Without digressing, I sympathize with all of the things you're running into!

This is starting to get hair-splitty, but yes, I would still say that an "assertoric force not limited to assertions" is either incoherent or, in some sense or manifestation, also non-assertoric. — J

See:

For Kimhi Frege's Fa displays assertoric force and therefore is not independent of it. It is not a judgment, but "displays" one. As I said earlier in the thread, I am not convinced that Frege would disagree with such claims. There is a possible equivocation on "assertoric force." — Leontiskos

I suppose it would be more technically correct to say that, rather than there being a possible equivocation on "assertoric force," Kimhi's distinction occurs as display vs. self-identifying display (of assertoric force). But it is worth recognizing that Kimhi does not make use of a non-assertoric force.

As to @Banno's question about what assertoric force is, following the "Frege-Geach point" (Martin) or "Frege's observation" (Kimhi), assertoric force is the thing that separates an asserted proposition from an unasserted proposition.* Then the question comes: does that definition stand or are Kimhi, Martin, et al. tweaking it as they go? Again, Martin's paper is very helpful with regard to the OP.

* For example, in a modus tollens the antecedent of the conditional premise does not possess assertoric force, whereas the same 'p' in the second premise does possess assertoric force.

That was fascinating. The answer was that Quine would say I have a unique connection to the world, but I also mind-meld with my community so that my language isn't private.

If I can mind-meld with my community, why can't I mind-meld with individual people? Or maybe it's that there is an innate primal language from which all languages emerge?

Food for thought. Thanks!

...Accordingly, the primary problem with Frege’s understanding of force is not that he fails to explain the absence of assertoric force from the use of declarative sentences in certain contexts but, rather, his failure to account for the unity of thought and force in assertions, be they logically simple or propositionally complex. — On Redrawing the Force Content Distinction, by Christian Martin, 180

(Note too that Martin uses the same language of "declarative sentences" vs. "assertions" that Srap and I developed earlier in the thread. This is much better than "displays" vs. "self-identifying displays.")

So it is making an assertion. Attaching an illocutionary force. Doing something with the proposition.